Nate stood abruptly and paced, hands clenching into fists and back stiff. “Then how is it possible he’s Mishka’s father? If he’s off in some other realm—”
“It’s possible if you know how to summon him,” she said quietly.
“And how could you know how to summon him? Records of his existence have been purged, destroyed. Grimoires with the rituals burned years ago—”
Heaven gave him a cold stare. “European magic isn’t the only magic, Nathan. Don’t be a snob. Others have summoned him before. It’s more than possible.”
“Maybe, if he actually existed, but he doesn’t.”
Great—Heaven was crying, Nate was pacing, and I was as confused as ever. “Since I lack the Ivy League witchy education, someone’s going to have to start explaining this to uneducated Miss Vampire over here. Why is it so impossible?”
Nate paused his wandering for a moment and I was sure the carpet he’d been wearing down rejoiced. “The particular demon that supposedly bore him would never actually be able to do it because mortal genes are too weak to meld with hers. That’s the problem with a lot of demons—even among their own kind, it’s difficult to procreate. Mortal genes are pretty easy to blend with, however, provided the demon isn’t all that powerful, but for Lo to exist... No. It’s just not possible.”
“There’s been how many gazillions of mortals over the years?” I said. “Seems to me that it’s at least a little possible that she found someone whose genetics were to her liking, though unlikely.” I couldn’t get out of my head a vision of a giant demon woman surrounded in fire singing Heart’s “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You.”
“Even if he did exist—which I’m not saying is true—but if he did, the odds that not only Heaven was capable of summoning him, but that her genetics and his melded to produce a perfectly healthy child that didn’t flat out die in the womb is just...” And back to pacing.
Heaven buried her face in her hands once more and sobbed, while I was still confused.
“So Mish was like second generation antichrist,” I said, breaking the silence.
No one responded.
“Okay, let’s say I buy that,” I said. “I mean, she was a bit of bitch, so it’s possible. But this is significant to our current situation how?”
“Perhaps it isn’t,” Heaven offered in a soft voice. “Maybe it means nothing...”
Nate stopped next to the couch. He ran a hand back through his dark hair and sent his cold blue eyes over to me. “But maybe it means everything.”
Chapter Twenty
No Biting Among Friends
I couldn’t get either of them to say anything else. Nate simply started for the door, and with Heaven in a near comatose state, I decided to follow him. During the entire drive back to my apartment, he remained mute. I posed a variety of questions, asked for further clarification on the demon-y aspects of what we had talked about, but he offered nothing.
It was possible he still had his boxers in a twist after the night before. Now he knew that not only was his dear wife Queen Lying Liar Lie-a-lot, but that she was part demon. It looked like neither one of us had really know Mishka Thiering at all.
Perhaps because I wasn’t a witch, I couldn’t fully understand the gravity of the situation. To me, the revelation of Mishka’s paternity seemed about as useless as everything else we had learned thus far. It didn’t explain why she married Nate, or subsequently wanted him dead. It didn’t explain who had attacked all the covens. And it certainly didn’t help with why someone would be abducting vampires.
It did explain why she was such a fucking bitch, though. Antichrist genes would probably do that to a girl.
Once in my apartment, Nate went to change the dressing on his gut. I figured it was probably healed over, but didn’t make mention of it. Sure enough, about two minutes later he called from the bathroom, “You’re sure you didn’t vamp me?”
“Quite certain.”
Nate padded back out to the living room, black button down shirt open at the top and untucked from his pants. He forsook a seat on the couch and took a spot on the floor; he’d done that all the night before after changing. Just sat there and meditated. It was irritating, so I’d retired to my room for the night and tried calling more contacts. Okay, I might’ve also played The Sims for three hours.
Since he was talking to me now, though, I opted to sit across from him on the carpet. “You don’t just need to be drained of blood—I would have to consume it, so the parasite in me could specially mutate itself to inhabit you. It’s a very fascinating process, or so I’m told.”
“You’ve never turned anyone?”
“Nope.” Sitting about a foot away from him, I leaned back on my hands. “Not once. Of course, I could make a helluvalot of money from it. Some people will pay serious cash for immortality, but then you’re stuck taking care of them once they’ve changed and stuff. New vamps tend to go pretty batshit crazy if someone’s not there to retrieve them and help them become well-adjusted, contributing members of society. Plus, you’re bound to run into them every few decades or so and I’ve yet to find someone I could tolerate being around on an eternal basis.”
Maybe he felt entitled to some probing questions after me bugging him last night—he wasn’t giving up yet. “Never even considered it? Not one of your friends? Not lovers?”
My hackles rose and I leveled him with the coldest gaze I had in my arsenal; the one that usually stopped a mortal in his tracks. “The only person I ever ‘loved’ was my husband.”
“And what happened to him?”
“I disemboweled him with my bare hands. What’s with the twenty questions?”
“Just curious, that’s all.” He shrugged. “Peter said he had heard of you.”
Peter? The demonology expert? “I should be pleased, but I don’t see how that’s possible. Vamps are the lowest of the low to you people, remember? There are far more interesting demons to study.”
A smile curved his lips—the type that made my undead heart thump a bit harder. “So you’re nothing special? You don’t secretly go out and help the helpless on a quest for redemption?”
“I did, once upon a time during my idealistic phase, but I grew out of it. And during my rebellious days, I viciously massacred people, and then I felt bad for it and tried to redeem myself.”
“But?”
“But when you’ve been alive as long as I have, you get bored. Right now I’m an assassin because, quite honestly, I don’t have anything better to do.”
He regarded me with a half-smile and steady gaze that made me start to squirm. “That sounds...depressing.”
“Welcome to my world. When you’ve done basically everything, you start to see how meaningless life—or unlife—really is. The trick is to lose yourself in whatever you do. In my case, for the past ten years I’ve been stealing. Now I’m an assassin. Generally it’s pretty easy work, but it’s fun. I fucking love the twenty-first century, though, because video games. That gives me something to do. If I’m really looking for a challenge, I take jobs tracking down and killing Hunters, or do something really nasty to have the top ones come after me.”
“You’ve taken on Venatores Daemonum?”
“Uh, yeah, and I’m insulted that you seem so surprised. Been outrunning—and killing—them for centuries. So you see, I really have done it all, even faced every vampire’s worst nightmare.”
“You’ve experienced everything but the annihilation of prominent covens and kidnapping of vampires,” Nate pointed out.
“True,” I agreed. “You’ve got me there. This is all pretty new. Oh, and my good friend of the past eight years turned out to be the daughter of the antichrist, and in turn the granddaughter of an even worse big bad demon. That was certainly different. Are you going to tell me any more about it?”
“There’s little to tell. I still have trouble believing Lo exists, but I highly doubt Heaven would lie about something like that. Though there are any number of people who might want
the Lord of Oblivion’s only known child dead, it still doesn’t explain everything else.”
“Maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, instead of questioning who has the motive, why not question who had the resources to pull all this off.” I wasn’t used to actually brainstorming with another person; perhaps I should hang up a whiteboard or something. And we could take notes.
Nate nodded his understanding. “That probably is the better question, but most of the people I know with that kind of money are all very much dead right now. Peter might know something, though.”
I tried to keep my tone casual. “You know, Mishka told me you weren’t very powerful.” That totally failed at “casual”.
He shrugged. Said nothing. Forced me to press harder.
“Was she aware you can stop time and teleport and Goddess knows what else?”
Whether he genuinely weighed the question or was stalling, I couldn’t say. At last he said, “I believe so.”
I waited, but he didn’t continue. Fuck, talk about pulling teeth. “The other night when you used the barrier spell to keep the guards out of your father’s room, you acted as though it wouldn’t hold.”
Again, he nodded his head slightly without offering anything else.
“I’m gonna keep bugging you until you explain.”
Another shrug, expression guarded. “There’s little to explain. I don’t use magic often and I’m out of practice, but recent events have called for it.”
“What else can you do?”
He looked up toward the ceiling. “You blacked out your skylights.”
It was true; there was a huge skylight that ran throughout the main room in my apartment, another in my bedroom, and a smaller one in the bathroom, but I had painted over all the glass with black shortly after I moved in. I failed to see what that had to do with what we were talking about, though.
“Don’t change the subject,” I said.
He ignored me and gestured upward. “Why did you get an apartment with skylights if you can’t be in sunlight?”
I bit back the urge to smack him. “Because I like having twenty-foot ceilings. Please tell me there’s a point to this.”
Blue eyes shifted back to mine, dark smoke swirling in their centers, drawing me in. “So you haven’t seen the sun in three hundred years?”
Electricity danced along my skin, nerves hyperaware. I’d never admit it, but the magic freaked me out—I wasn’t used to someone stronger than me, better than me. I could kick his ass, sure, but he could fucking stop time. And a strange little thrill went through me when I felt the shift in the air, saw the haze over his eyes, and sensed a magical storm about to hit.
I swallowed dryly and pushed a snarky tone back into my voice, hoping he couldn’t tell precisely what effect he had on me. “Duh. What’s your—”
My lips snapped shut as he muttered words I couldn’t make out. The lights in the room went out, leaving us in darkness.
Um...what the hell?
A weak glow appeared to the upper left of me, on the wall by the windows. I gazed up and watched as the light burned brighter and brighter.
Jesus, he’s going to burn me alive... “Um...Nate?”
First the rounded edge of a fiery orange sphere peeked around from behind some unseen obstacle, then gradually it grew. My body tensed, ready to run, waiting for the hot burn on my skin, the agony pouring through me.
It didn’t happen. The sun stretched across the apartment ceiling until it illuminated the entire room, bathing us both in light. My bare skin warmed in the sunlight, my hair and dark clothes burned.
It was beautiful. So many years and I hadn’t really thought about the sun, hadn’t wondered about what I was missing. When I lived, the sun made for long days in the garden, harsh on skin and bearer of headaches in the summer. But this...this was glorious.
I closed my eyes for a moment, drinking in the heat and savoring the feeling. When I opened them again, Nate was watching me. I didn’t know whether it was the faux sunlight radiating from his taut skin, or perhaps that he had created the sunlight itself, but I was suddenly very aware of him—his breathing, his heartbeat, and the hot blood coursing through him. And in the light, he was gorgeous.
Too soon the sun had passed to the other side of the apartment and it perished behind another nonexistent horizon. As the last beams faded, part of me seemed to darken with it.
Moments later, Nate switched a couple of the lamps back on with a few magical words.
Holy fuck. I let out a breath—a very human gesture, I realized, but one I felt compelled to engage in anyway. “Well.”
“Well?”
I gave him a grin. “Is that all you can do?”
“No, but I was hoping it would leave you speechless for a while.” He gave me a sexy half-grin—a real, genuine smile with no boohoo I’m a brooding widow shadows behind it. “I guess I was mistaken.”
“There’s a much easier way to get me to stop talking.” I shifted, pulled myself in to a crouch, pressed my palms to the floor, and crawled the short distance to him. Already the guards were back up—smile gone, back stiff, but I’d be damned if I’d give up without a seductive fight.
He didn’t respond, which, though infuriating, was also mildly arousing. No better way to drive someone insane than to show absolutely no interest.
I wanted him. Wanted him in a way that made my chest ache. Because he was betrayed and damaged under all the guards he put up, because he just created a freakin’ sun knowing I hadn’t seen it in centuries, because I wanted to spend the next year unwrapping all his layers to see exactly what kind of man awaited me on the inside.
The intensity of that want scared me; I nearly hightailed it out of there just to escape it. But I’d never failed at seduction before and maybe if I got him out of my system—maybe if I confronted all that want—it would lessen a bit and I’d feel less terrified.
I tried a casual smile. “C’mon...you’re pretty. I’m pretty. We could be pretty together.”
“My wife was murdered two nights ago—”
Oh god, more brooding. “Yeah, after trying to kill you. Time to move on. Or...” I moved my lips to his throat and tasting his skin in a kiss. “...I could just bite you.”
His pulse quickened beneath my lips. Fear or lust? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I really don’t need your permission.”
“Well, you won’t be getting it, either.” Still, he didn’t move. Not to push me away, and not to take me in his arms either. Frozen solid, watching me. Weirdo.
I was close enough to taste his lips, his breath warm on my face; my gaze drifted up again to meet his eyes, voice went low and husky. “I’ve been around a long, long time, and I’ve invented positions you couldn’t dream of. I can take you right here hard and fast, sweet and slow, ride you to exhaustion until you’re empty but craving more, and then do it all again.”
His blood was rushing south—I could feel it, heat searing, burning in him. He leaned closer, eyes leveled at me, mouth nearly brushing mine. “And I could take you to the edge and keep you there for hours, quivering near madness, begging me to release you—and that’s even without bringing magic into it. But that will never happen. Ever.”
I swallowed. Hard. Tried not to let it sting. “’Cause I’m not blonde?”
“Because you’re self-absorbed, arrogant, childish, and I’m not interested.”
A flush infused my cheeks—real, genuine hurt, rejection feeling like a slap across my face. I swallowed dryly and fought to pick up my shattered pride.
But I could fake it. Pretend it didn’t bother me—that I didn’t take the whole thing too seriously. I pulled back to sit on my heels and pouted. “You’re no fun.”
“My apologies,” he said without smiling.
I rolled my eyes. “You can’t blame a girl for trying.” I stood and started for my room. “Whatever,�
�� I called. “I’m going to bed. If you decide to stop being a killjoy, you’re welcome to join me.” I glanced back at him just as I stopped in my doorway, but he made no move to rise.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Home Invasion
Blood was thick and hot, seeping through the floorboards.
And I stood in the middle of it.
The stench of loosened bowels and stomach acid thickened the air. Ripped entrails spilled over the ground at my feet, the last of a dying man’s gasps filled my ears. For a glorious moment, rage had climaxed and I felt nothing but righteous glee. But the high didn’t last.
Now I was alone and terrified...
The sound of breaking glass startled me awake.
My eyelids flew open. Met a bright, harsh light that blinded. One of my hands shot out to shield my face—
Skin burned.
I shrieked before I could stop myself, pain—god, the pain—zigzagging through my body.
Oh fuck no, the skylights...
I rolled off the bed onto the floor, then rolled under the bed, forcing the pain of the broken glass on my blistering skin to the back of my mind. How the fuck was I going to get out?
“Zara!” Nate shouted from the other room. Crashing relief filled me and I nearly cried as a weight seemed to lift. I wasn’t alone. Not alone.
More glass shattered. I saw little from my vantage point under the bed, but heavy dark curtains hit the hardwood floor, followed by three pairs of feet in combat boots.
Shit.
Gunfire tore through the room. The three figures fell to the floor, sunlight glistening off the blood oozing from bullet-riddled chests and faces.
I saw Nate duck down in my bedroom doorway, gun in hand.
“Are you all right?”
Good to know he wasn’t going to leave me to die for hitting on him the night before. “Well, I’m seriously considering getting a basement apartment.” I glanced at my body. Foolishly, I had chosen to sleep in a tank top and thong. Comfortable? Yes. Practical for keeping out of the sun? A resounding “no.” “Now, how about some clothes?”
Bloodlines (Demons of Oblivion) Page 15
